Frank Abbott nodded, but did not speak. Lamb went on.

“She might, but I can’t see her doing it like that. To my way of thinking, the sort of woman she was would have made a better show of it-dressed it up a bit. Suicides do, you know. There’s a lot of the old ‘They’ll be sorry when I’m dead’ about them, especially with women who kill themselves over love affairs. They want to make a good dramatic impression that’ll give them plenty of limelight and leave the man in the case something to think about for the rest of his life. As I see it, by all accounts Mrs. Latter wasn’t the sort of person to want to slip away quietly and not give any trouble. No woman who’s managed to get herself as much disliked as she had is going to think about other people’s feelings. That sort of woman wants to make a splash. She makes up her face, she does her hair, she puts on her best nightgown, and she leaves a suicide note to harrow the man’s feelings up.”

Frank’s indifferent look had changed. He said,

“Yes-I think you’re right.”

Lamb had talked himself into a good temper.

“Then I must be! Well, if it isn’t suicide it’s murder. And if it’s murder, then it’s one of the people in this house-one of seven people. Mr. Antony Latter is out of it-he wasn’t here. A bit of good luck for him. He’d no motive either, as far as one can see. You don’t poison a woman because she sets her cap at you. Well, that leaves Mr. Jimmy Latter the husband, those two half-sisters who aren’t really half-sisters at all-”

“His stepmother’s daughters.”

“That’s right. It leaves them, and that Miss Mercer, and the servants-the old cook who’s been here donkey’s years, the kitchenmaid, a girl of seventeen, and Mrs. Gladys Marsh.” He repeated the last name in a very disapproving tone, “Mrs. Gladys Marsh. Well, I’m sorry for her husband, whoever he is. A thorough-going bad lot is how I’d put her down. Why, she’d the impudence to make eyes at me.”

With a perfectly straight face, Sergeant Abbott said,

“Incredible, sir!”

The bullseyes bulged a little.

“Look here-how do you mean, ‘incredible’? You saw her, didn’t you?”

He got a properly respectful reply.

“I mean it would have been incredible if I hadn’t seen it.”

Lamb grunted.

“Well, bad lot or no, I think we count her out. I can’t see what motive she’d have. She was by way of being the spoilt favourite, I gather, and if she’d had any hand in the business, I shouldn’t expect her to put herself forward the way she did. I don’t suppose we’d have heard a word about Mrs. Latter having those sick attacks and saying someone was trying to poison her if Mrs. Gladys Marsh hadn’t had her fit of hysterics and let it out. I don’t see anyone else tumbling over themselves to tell us. They’ll all stick together, the rest of them will. There’s the family-that’s natural. And there’s that old woman in the kitchen-she’s been here more than fifty years. Well, people like that, they’ll stick even closer than the relations will.”

“Plus royaliste que le roi,” murmured Sergeant Abbott, adding hastily, “You’re quite right, sir.”

He got a glare.

“Oh, I am, am I? And let me tell you that my own language is good enough for me, and if it isn’t good enough for you it ought to be! If you’ve got to put a thing into a foreign language, it’s either because it’s something to be ashamed of, or it’s because you’re showing off.”

Having waved the red rag, Frank made a strategic retirement.

“It was a quotation, Chief.”

“Then you can quote in English! There’s the whole of Shakespeare, isn’t there? Extraordinary what a lot of quotations there are in Shakespeare.”

“Quite true, sir.”

“Then stick to ’em! And don’t go foreign on me-it puts me out! Where was I?”

“Mrs. Maniple sticking closer than a relation.”

Lamb nodded.

“She’s that sort. And she’s got the girl Polly What’s-her-name-”

Frank offered “Pell.”

“Polly Pell. She’s got her well under her thumb, I should say. Kitchenmaids were kitchenmaids when she went into service. She’ll have gone through the mill herself, and she’ll not be standing any nonsense. Things don’t change so much as you’d think in a village. I was brought up in one, and I know. The world’s been turned upside down, but there’s a long way to go before you can stop a determined old woman having her own way with a girl like that. So we come back to where we started. If Gladys Marsh hadn’t let the cat out of the bag, I don’t suppose anyone else would have done it.”

“I don’t suppose they would.”

“Well then, if we leave out Gladys Marsh we get the family and the old cook. I think we can leave the girl out of it too- she wouldn’t have any motive. So then there’s Mr. Latter, Mrs. Street, Miss Vane, Miss Mercer-I’m counting her as family-and Mrs. Maniple. Well, Mr. Latter has the strongest motive. He’s been married two years, and by all accounts he’s very devoted to his wife-thinks no end of her. And then all of a sudden he gets this frightful shock. He finds her in his cousin’s room in the middle of the night in her nightgown, fairly throwing herself at him, and his cousin saying no. It’s enough to throw a man off his balance. If he’d killed her then, he’d have got off with a nominal sentence. Provocation-that’s what he had. But he didn’t kill her then. He takes the rest of the night, and all next day, and the best part of another twenty-four hours after that. And Mrs. Latter dies of an overdose of morphia administered in her after-dinner coffee. He had the motive-there’s no stronger motive than jealousy. He’d put her on a pedestal and she’d come down with a crash. He had the opportunity-he was alone in the room, with the coffee in those two cups on the tray. You may say that all the rest of the family had an equal opportunity, and that’s true. Take their own statements. Miss Vane brings the tray in and puts it down, goes out on to the terrace and along to this study window, where she looks in and asks Mr. Latter if he is coming into the drawing-room for his coffee. He says yes, and she wanders about for a bit. By the time she looks in to say she’s going for a walk the rest of the family are in the drawing-room, Mr. Latter is drinking his coffee, and Mrs. Latter is going towards her chair with her cup in her hand. Miss Vane goes away, and doesn’t come back till ten o’clock, when she finds Mrs. Latter alone in the drawing-room in a state of collapse. That’s Miss Julia Vane. She could have put morphia into either of the cups, but she had no means of knowing which one Mrs. Latter would take.”

Frank Abbott had straightened up. His eyes were cool and keen. He said,

“Quite.”

Lamb went on.

“Miss Mercer comes next. She says she came into the drawing-room and found Mrs. Latter there, standing by the coffee-table. She says she was putting sugar in her coffee. Mrs. Latter said something about where were the others, and went out on to the terrace by way of looking for them. Miss Mercer says she followed her. If it ever comes to a trial, I suppose the defence will say it wasn’t sugar Mrs. Latter was putting into her cup, it was the morphia powdered up to look like sugar. I suppose that’s possible-but it don’t seem likely. On her own showing Miss Mercer had the opportunity of doctoring one of the cups.”

“That would mean premeditation.”

Lamb nodded.

“That goes for all of them… Mrs. Street comes next. She says she came into the drawing-room and found it empty. The coffee-tray was on the table. She hadn’t been there more than a moment, when Mr. Latter came in. He didn’t come along the terrace and in through the window, but followed her through the door. Mrs. Latter and Miss Mercer were on the terrace. She said she would call them, and went out by way of the window, leaving Mr. Latter alone in the room. She had her opportunity, and she left him with his. That’s all plain-each of them was alone with the coffee-tray. One of them must have poisoned the coffee which Mrs. Latter drank. I don’t think it’s reasonable to suppose it was the cook. She is by all accounts devoted to Mr. Latter, and if she poisoned one cup, it would be an absolute toss-up whether he got it or not. She could have no motive except general resentment, and she’d never have risked it. I think we’ll cut her out. That leaves us with Miss Vane, Mrs. Street, Miss Mercer, and Mr. Latter. They all had an equal opportunity to putting something into one of the cups. But Miss Vane, like the cook, had no control over who took which cup. They all agree that she didn’t come back into the drawing-room. So she’s in the same boat as the cook, and I’m going to leave her out too, at any rate for the present. Now we’ve got Mrs. Street, Miss Mercer, and Mr. Latter. And this is where they all go vague on us. I want to know who dished those cups out. When Miss Vane looked in Mr. Latter was in a chair by the window drinking his coffee, and Mrs. Latter was crossing the room with her cup in her hand. Mrs. Street was sitting quite close to the open terrace door. Miss Mercer was picking up some rose-leaves which had fallen from a vase on the mantelpiece. Mrs. Street says she didn’t touch the coffee-cups or notice who did-she was very tired, and she was only thinking about how soon she could get off to bed. Miss Mercer says she didn’t go near the tray or touch the cups after she and Mrs. Latter came in together from the terrace. She says Mrs. Latter walked straight up to the tray and took her cup. Mr. Latter says his cup was on the small table beside his chair. He says he didn’t notice whether it was there when he first came into the room. Well, maybe he’s lying. If he put morphia into one of the cups he wouldn’t want to risk getting that cup himself-he’d make sure there wasn’t any mistake by putting his own cup out of harm’s way. Mrs. Street says she can’t remember whether both cups were on the tray when she went through. She’d been to see her husband that afternoon-he’s being moved to a convalescent home at Brighton-and she says she was much too taken up with thinking about him and how tired she was to be bothering about coffee cups. Miss Mercer says both cups were on the tray when she came into the drawing-room. Of course either she or Mrs. Street could have put the morphia into one of the cups and shifted the other to the table by Mr. Latter’s chair. Or Mr. Latter could have done it himself when he was alone in the room.”